The Bruise of Knowing: a Short History of John Monash by Phyllis Perlstone, Puncher & Wattmann 2019, was launched by Anna Kerdijk Nicholson on 11 May 2019 at Benledi House, Glebe, in Sydney.

Thank you for coming to celebrate the launch of Phyllis Perlstone’s book, The Bruise of Knowing : Poems: a Short History of John Monash.

As an introduction, I will read to you from a pair of sequenced poems from the book, ‘Two Incidents as Engineer / Not to Plan for them was the Mould of Disaster’ partly because it will let the work speak to you and partly because the more I think about these particular poems, the more I think they will help me to lay out my thoughts for why I think this is an important book.

1901…King’s Bridge at Bendigo

To measure the bend in it –skewed over the riverto suit the orders for the bridge –Monash and Richardson, Bendigo’s city engineerdecidedespite thin streaking across itit’s safe to continue testing –a roller and traction engineare run along to meet together– 25 tons at the centre –

the bridge twistsconcrete bits break offthe water’s splash, the crashing piecesthe slow time of gravity’s nextis like glassin an accident

Monash tries to speakto a reporternear himhis face muddiedshock splits intohis ‘greatest regret’‘the loss of life’ –stilted, his mind’s stallwords remove him from the moment –as if he could speak for the pallof ends in the air, of being stoppedof waiting

Monash reads out the listto roll-call all of themthe menin the wreckand the shattering going on

and Monash put every workerin the picturea corollaryfor field and groups of menthereafternot to plan for them was the mould of disaster

……..From Two Incidents as Engineer/……..Not to Plan for them was the Mould of Disaster [pp3-6]……..

I think this is an important book for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it shows to us, as Australians, a perspective of Australia in history. Secondly, because it treats with the, sadly, continuing and contemporary themes of xenophobia and religious bigotry. And thirdly, because this is a work of mature literary and poetic technique.

AUSTRALIA IN HISTORYIn a month’s time it will be the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles which was signed in June 1919. John Monash was born in 1865 and died in 1931. In his life, he saw the rise of feminism and ‘forward-rushing’ societal change. He saw, first-hand, the transition from the Ottoman, British and German Empires to the modern age. This man championed Monier’s reinforced concrete; the new ballistics and cannons; the use of bi-planes to scout-out the enemy’s position before battle; using armoured vehicles to advance protectively alongside infantry; and he prioritised feeding ‘his men’, and the recovery and treatment of the wounded.

The chronology of this book bites down when colonial Australia is a mere 100 years old in the 1880s. Monash, who lived in Jerilderie and Melbourne, met Ned Kelly and attended Sarah Bernhardt’s and Nelly Melba’s performances. These people are now part of Australia’s white cultural mythology of resistance, expedition and talent. Australia’s new populace was literally constructing itself during these decades and the engineer, Monash, was involved. As at 1914, with the troops embarking for the Great War, Australia went back out into the international arena. As a consequence of direct re-engagement with Europe and the Middle-East, Australians understood themselves, differentiated from the British.

After Gallipoli he neededto inventgo past the paraded ritesthe mimicking of a plucky vicarious gloriousness

not to be like the British officers, those whofrom their classes of commandthe hierarchies they followedwhere carelessnessnot thinkingnot sparing the rankswas forgivenyet holding fast to equipment valuable machinesand expending men

still couldn’t stopthe Germans’ holdon sites, on towns, where infantrywere left everywhereto bury their dead

………from Aged Fifty and after Leave [p60]

XENOPHOBIA & RELIGIOUS BIGOTRYThe early Monash who the book presents has rages, affairs, he ‘wants to control’ his wife, Vic, expects her to ‘respect his authority’, he even abducts their child from her. He is intelligent and talented. He is driven and ambitious —

Monash… believes in his ambition, the one he is to achieve.

……..from Vic [p23]

At the opening of the annual gunnery course

excited to speak on what transported himhe transfixes his audiencewith the intricacieslighting his own thinking

over what was marvellous.…… the paper praisesMonashfor his “first-rate style”the lecture he presented.

He is easy, spontaneous, “note-free”on improved structure in cannons.

……..from ‘Ambitions’ [p33 & 34]

But after Gallipoli, no longer transported by marvelous cannon, and affected by having witnessed the effect of cannon on human beings, Monash is learning to subjugate his talents:

If it was also a love of reaching goals, puzzling strategies,in war it was to be hardto hold back his own intenseforethoughtdropping it as if he could believe incompliance,in the arrangements of othersunder their command

……..from Again Monash writes to Vic [p58]

Monash uses his intellect for planning. He marshals and cares for the men under him; he institutes those strategic warfare innovations using modern machinery instead of flesh and blood. When Monash is ordered to ‘seize the High Ridge … he objects … his men were exhausted’, but he is ordered to go ahead. 2,000 men are killed and there are 7,000 casualties.

Monash tells Charles Bean – Australia’s official war historian – it is “a disaster” – (thinks Bean will utter his concern for the soldiers)

Bean uses this report to slurMonash as if this shows what is breakable in hima glassy figurehead easily “shattered”And flawed by birth – the sonof Jewish German parents

……..from “Ordered” [pp51-52]

Murdoch (a journalist) and Bean (the war historian) ‘take exception to Monash’s exceptional eclectic intellect — “the Jew will always get there”’. How they ‘try to prevent his appointment to be corps commander to Monash is ‘strange’. Dealing with that prejudice while managing all his responsibilities of command, Monash responds: ‘it’s difficult “fighting a pogrom”’.

Here is classic discrimination and racism: the application of generic characteristics to an individual; pre-judgment; skewing in reportage; and sidelining and control by collusion. While it confuses Monash and angers him, he consistently continues to apply his skills to the tasks at hand and succeeds mightily and worthily, regardless.

1892 Monash is Abused and Insulted

By Lieutenant Colonel Dean PittHe can’t get promoted to Captainhe ‘thinks now’ it’s ‘because he is a Jew’

He’s recognised by the Colonel ashaving qualities but this seems to be a faulta reason for keeping him backthe strange dislikesinks Monash’s mood

Now he’s between desire and what he will do

He twists in the spinof what goes around himyet keeps him outno way to redress not being with thosehe’s thought he needed only his worth, to be among’

……..From 1892 Monash is Abused and Insulted [p26]

I commend Phyllis for her handling of this difficult, continuing and contemporary theme for modern Australia.

LITERARY TECHNIQUEThis book is the product of the mature technique of a poet who has been working solidly for the last three decades. The voice is as bright, the rhythm and syntax as rich and complex but there is an assuredness to the work.

It is the poetic technique which makes this work other than a summation of quotes from historical sources or mock-reportage. What is it, then, which makes this work poetry?

I think part of its success is the intensity of the poet’s gaze at the subject matter which raises the image to symbolic:

Both Vic and Monashsitting at a piano together playing duets touch a scoreeach understands.The passages hold them tense,the sounding out of different tones stir words, worldsheightening, merginginto a space for them together playingBetter than speaking to their strangeness to each other.

……..From Monash: gets his degree … [p16]

We are taken outside fiction or history book and are asked to apply ourselves to the sensory experience of the moment described, as well as seeing it as somehow definitive or representative of the nature of their relationship.

Phyllis has a painterly eye. You may know that she was a maker of experimental films and perspective is every-present as a theme in all her books. She alludes to Nolan, Breughel and Titian. She describes Nolan’s painting ‘The Slip’ in exquisite detail but it is her interpretation of our ‘seeing’ of the painting that we experience Phyllis at her most ‘Phyllis’:

Which brings me to the use of time. See how she is already ahead of you, which makes you think back to what you have been looking at, and then you do a review, and realise you have not been looking at anything? That use of ‘foresight of hindsight’ engenders, elsewhere in the book, irony. You already know something (and of course we do, this is after all a history of history) that is being revealed to us. This playing with the chronology is another play of perspective that deepens the philosophical and sometimes the psychological engagement with the themes.

In another time-related technique, Phyllis uses poetic parentheses. She brackets small poems with diagonal slashes. I like to think of these as sections of exegesis as we are taken to where the poet is living her life and thinking about photographs of Monash or facts gleaned from biographies of him. I think this assists the book to avoid disingenuousness: she is signaling to us that we read this subject through the lens of her eyes. She has selected and ‘sampled’ from the recorded life, she has interpreted it, and it is not an historical account.I find this work fascinating. It engages me intellectually. I’m delighted by the detail, I feel I understand Monash and by the end of the book I have immense compassion for him.

In conclusion, I say, with great respect, that Phyllis handles the scope and depth of this work masterfully. I hope the prize judges agree with me.

– Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

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Anna Kerdijk Nicholson’s three collections of poetry are The Bundanon Cantos (2003), Possession (2010) and Everyday Epic (2015) and the chapbook, What was Lost (2007). In 2010, Possession won the Victorian Premier’s Prize and the Wesley Michel Wright Prize and in 2011 was shortlisted for the ACT and the NSW Premiers’ Prizes. Born in Yorkshire, she now farms on the NSW Southern Tablelands. ‘Everyday Epic’ is published by Puncher & Wattmann: https://puncherandwattmann.com/books/book/everyday-epic